How to keep writing when you have anxiety

May 6, 2018

Writer Lifestyle, Writing Mindset

⭐️ You want to be a successful novelist, but it's hard to focus when you're so stressed out. How do you keep writing when you have anxiety? ⭐️

How do you keep writing when you have anxiety? When you feel like you’re just barely making it through your life? Like the whole thing is one big blur of “If I could just finish this one thing, then…”?

For 8 years, my life felt exactly like this—but yours doesn’t have to.

I existed in a constant state of mid-grade anxiety. I was in survival mode—carrying out day-to-day necessities without really being ‘present’ in my life.

But that’s the problem. When you fill up all of your free minutes with writing, you start to associate writing with rushing + overwhelm.

You know how they say you should “eat mindfully” and savor every bite of food you take? Your writing should be the same. It deserves a dedicated time; it deserves to be savored. When you snack on writing time, it doesn’t satisfy you. It’s just junk food. You spend a lot of time working, but you can’t make any progress because it’s not good writing time.

When you write, only write, and give yourself a break from it so your mind can recharge. Choose to write only on Monday/Wednesday nights. Or only on Sunday mornings. You can choose the schedule that works for your lifestyle, but make sure you don’t let the hours overlap too much or your writing will start feeling like ‘junk food’ again.

2. Don’t let sneaky “multitasking” invade your writing hours

If there’s one thing that will screw you up hardcore and keep you from getting anything done, it’s multitasking.

Listening to your writing playlist and then jamming out to it because it’s so good

Popping back and forth among a dozen browser tabs looking for the one that had that picture you wanted to use as your protagonist’s inspiration

Googling “research” for your novel while you’re also in Scrivener trying to draft the scene

Moving your cat’s tail from the keyboard… again

Focus is so important for writers.

When you focus, you are more creative. You are more engaged. That shows in your writing.

Stop fumbling the dreaded “What’s your book about?” question!

& make outlining SUPER EASY in just 1 hour!

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3. Remind your brain how to focus

When you’ve got anxiety (or you’re someone who’s grown up/lived around the Internet for a while), focus can be really hard. Fortunately, your brain CAN be trained.

You have to make a conscious effort to make the change. This means:

Setting yourself up for success — eliminating any potential distractions when you work, like your cell phone next to you; your inbox open; being logged into your social media accounts; etc.

Developing awareness for distractions — we all get distracted all the time, but when you’re training your brain to focus, you’ll need to be extra vigilant; when you notice that you’ve become distracted, you should acknowledge it and tell yourself you are choosing to go back to writing.

Start by trying to focus on just one big task per day — you’ll get better at this and be able to do 2-3 different tasks in a day eventually, but for now, work on it by focusing REALLY WELL on just one a day. I recommend you choose writing one scene.

Repeating this until it’s natural — all habits take time to build; give yourself a month to 6 weeks to feel like “a natural” at focusing on your writing.

4. Remember what made you passionate in the beginning

How do you write something when you can’t remember what made that idea so exciting to you? 🤔 This happens to writers a lot. We get a great new novel idea, we start writing, and then we lose all interest in it and you feel like you can’t even call yourself a writer anymore.

Is that spark gone forever? There’s a good chance that you can rekindle the excitement you originally had for your writing if you try.

If you had to write every single day for the rest of your life, how could you make that feel like a reward?

What’s your Magnum Opus going to be?

Be confident in your passion for writing because if you aren’t—if you do it something just to do it, or if you jump in head first without clarifying your real desires, wants, and needs—you’ll never really succeed. It will always be a little bit of a chore. Until it becomes a lot a huge chore.

The key to avoiding anxiety is to make sure it stays a passion and doesn’t become a chore.

5. Commit to a daily daydream

Here’s an exercise that will help you focus your mind on writing, keep your creativity flowing, and reduce your anxiety all at once:

Every day, for just 3 minutes, meditate on your current WIP. Do it until you can call up every aspect of your plot and characters immediately, even when you’re doing other things. Then keep doing it.

It’s an amazing exercise for brainstorming and working through tough problems. When I was planning my first novel, this process—just thinking about different scenarios for the novel for a few minutes each day—helped me outline all the scenes in one week. After that, all I had to do was write it.

It also helped a lot when I was working through tough plot points that popped up when characters decided to detour from the original outline I wrote, or when I realized that I’d missed something, or that a new subplot really needed to be included.

It’s amazing the 180 you can do when you think about something for just 180 seconds.

I still use this process every day, and my best ideas come from it.

Which one of these changes would most help you keep writing when you have anxiety?

I’d love to know. And if you’ve got another tip on how to keep writing when you have anxiety, please share them in the comments.